31.10.1893 – 07.01.1976

Vladimir Alekseevich Milashevsky is a Russian Soviet artist. Draftsman, watercolorist, painter, illustrator. Member of the World of Art, 4 Arts associations, one of the organizers of the Thirteen group. Published about 100 books. His drawings for Russian and foreign classics have become classics of the illustration genre.

Born in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia). Milashevsky’s early years were spent in Saratov, where the best provincial art museum in Russia was located, where the poet M.A. Kuzmin, painter V.E. Borisov-Musatov. It is not surprising that Milashevsky from childhood “fell ill” with art. In 1905-1910 he studied at the evening classes of the Bogolyubov Drawing School and private studios in Saratov.

In 1911-1913 in Kharkov, where the Milashevsky family moved, the young man visited the private studio of A.I. Grotto. In 1913 he entered the architectural department of the Imperial St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. In 1915-1916 he left the Academy and began studying at the New Art Workshop (NXM), where G.S. Vereisky and B.D. Grigoriev, and teachers – M.V. Dobuzhinsky and A.E. Yakovlev. The masters of the “World of Art” had a huge influence on the young artist. Milashevsky was closely acquainted with A.N. Benoit.

While working at the National Art Museum, he met Mikhail Kuzmin and Yuri Yurkun, for whom he drew an ex-libris. In 1921 he illustrated Curtained Pictures by M. Kuzmin.

Milashevsky’s favorite art form is graphics. Portraits, landscapes, everyday scenes, executed by the artist in the 1920s – 1930s, are distinguished by accuracy of characteristics, sharpness of details, sense of time.

In 1924 V.A. Milashevsky moved to Moscow. Prior to that, he lived for three years in Petrograd, in the House of Arts, created by M. Gorky to save the intelligentsia, where his neighbors were Nikolai Gumilyov, Valentina Khodasevich, Osip Mandelstam, Olga Forsh. It was there that Milashevsky met many of them.

In 1929–1931, the name of V.A. Milashevsky was known as one of the theorists and organizers of the creative World of Art group “Thirteen”. Actually, this group lasted only three years, which at different times included Tatyana Mavrina, Nikolai Kuzmin, Antonina Safronova, Boris Rybchenkov, Daniil Daran, Olga Hildebrandt, Yuri Yurkun, Valentin Yustitsky and other young artists. On the one hand, to return independence and aesthetic value to the drawing, on the other hand, to work emotionally and lightning fast – these are the two main principles that led to the creation of Thirteen. It was then that Milashevsky developed a special “tempo method” – an instantly executed, sometimes not even with a pen, but with a match, a dynamic and emotional drawing.

In recent decades, Milashevsky has worked extensively as a book graphic artist. It is in this area that his most famous works belong: drawings for The Posthumous Notes of the Pickwick Club by Charles Dickens, excellent illustrations for Pushkin’s fairy tales, for Pyotr Ershov’s The Little Humpbacked Horse, as well as for the books of his contemporaries (Ehrenburg’s Thirteen Pipes, Ural fairy tales” Bazhov), and children’s books.